Poles in Germany are treated badly: Speaker

The Polish minority in Germany is treated badly, the Polish Senate Speaker has said ahead of the German president's official visit to Warsaw on Friday.

Poles in Dresden, Germany. Photo: berlin.msz.gov.pl.

Germany “is like an island where Poles are treated the worst,” the Speaker, Stanisław Karczewski, said.

“It is different in different countries, but nowhere in Europe is it as bad as in Germany,” he said.

Karczewski added that the treatment of Poles in Germany and of Germans in Poland was uneven, which was “extremely strange and needs to be changed”.

Karczewski said the issue of Germany's Polish minority will be discussed during German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier's Friday trip to Warsaw. He will meet Polish President Andrzej Duda and Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło.

Steinmeier had also been expected to meet with Karczewski but called off his visit to the Polish parliament, the Speaker said on Twitter on Wednesday.

Up to 2.85 million people of Polish heritage live in Germany, while some 750,000 immigrants to the country are of Polish origin, making Poles the second-largest immigrant population in Germany after Turks.